John Dominici

Blessed John Dominici, O.P.
Dominican religious and Cardinal Archbishop of Ragusa
Born	1346 Florence, Italy
Died	10 June 1419 Buda, Hungary
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church (Dominican Order)
Beatified	1837 by Pope Gregory XVI
Major shrine	Church of St. Paul the Hermit Buda, Hungary (destroyed in Turkish invasions)
Feast	10 June

The Blessed John Dominici, O.P., (1356 – 10 June 1419) was an Italian Dominican friar who became a Cardinal, statesman and writer. His ideas had a profound influence on the art of Fra Angelico, who entered the Order through him.

Dominici was born in Florence in 1356 to very poor, but devout, parents. Growing up, he would spend hours each day in the Dominican Church of Santa Maria Novella. Not surprisingly, at the age of 17 he sought admission to the Order. He suffered, however, from a severe speech impediment, which, combined with a lack of formal education, made the friars doubt the validity of his vocation to their Order. They refused him admission repeatedly over the course of two years, even insisting that he should stay home to care for his parents, while his parents insisted that they did not want to stand in the way of his religious calling.

He was then accepted and began his novitiate with the friars there. To their surprise, they found that he had a sharp mind, with a good grasp of the complexities of theology and philosophy, so much so that he was sent to the University of Paris to further his studies. On his return from Paris, when he completed his theological studies in 1372, his speech impediment finally became the problem which the authorities of the Order had feared. Preaching was an expected part of each friar's life, and clearly this would be a problem for this particular friar. John sought the intercession of the holy Dominican tertiary, St. Catherine of Siena, who had recently died, and he was miraculously cured of his disability. He was then appointed professor and preacher, a post he held for twelve years at Venice.

In 1392 John was appoint Vicar Provincial of the Roman Province. It was a time of disorder for Order, which had suffered major losses in membership through a great plague. (The priory in Venice alone, e.g., had lost 77 friars in a matter of months.) With the authorization of the Master General, Raymond of Capua, John established priories of strict observance of the Order at Venice (1394) and Fiesole (1406). It was in the latter that the talented artists and brothers, John and Benedict, entered the Order, John going on to be known in history as Fra Angelico. Dominici also founded the Monastery of Corpus Domini (Venice) at Venice for the Dominican nuns of the Strict Observance; a contemporary account of his life was found in the chronicle and necrology of that monastery by Bartolomea Riccoboni.

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